An Amtrak Employee Forced a Passenger to Remove Her Political Button

Usually airlines are the ones dealing with publicity nightmares, but this weekend, Amtrak is cleaning up its own mess. On Friday afternoon, a Chicago woman traveling to Seattle on Amtrak was told by an employee to remove a button bearing a political slogan before she could board her train, reports DNAinfo.

The passenger, Melissa Stone, posted about the incident on Twitter, writing that an Amtrak employee told to remove her "Love trumps hate" button before boarding the train because the railway is federally funded. "When she said it, I was stunned and thought she misunderstood the pin," Stone's partner, Chase McClure, told DNAinfo. The couple admittedly thought the attendant was joking until she insisted it was in accordance with an Amtrak policy to "prevent friction between passengers."

After Stone's first Tweet went out (at the time of publishing, it has more than 2,480 retweets) on Friday afternoon, Amtrak's Manager of Onboard Services confirmed that no such rule exists and that the employee misinterpreted policy. Another Amtrak spokesperson has publicly apologized for the incident, and clarified that the employee misunderstood the railway's policy of prohibiting passengers from being disruptive, especially in the sleeping car where Stone and McClure were seated.